Tag Archives: rachel maddow

MSNBC ran a great big long interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg Monday night, and she was as wonderful as ever. Irin Carmon talked to her for a good long while, and we learned that Ginsburg is not especially crazy about the current dysfunctional Congress, is reasonably sure that Roe v Wade will stand (though she makes no firm predictions), and is obviously delighted by her status as a nerd icon — but despite being pleased by the “Notorious RBG” stuff, is puzzled that anyone would get her face tattooed on their arm. T-shirts, sure, but a tattoo strikes her as a bit much. Here are a whole bunch of clips from the Rachel Maddow Show and a couple from Lawrence O’Donnell. At some point, MSNBC really should just put the whole uninterrupted interview up online, please. For now, we have the clips and Irin Carmon’s write-up of the interview.
Read more on Behind The Black Robe: Ruth Bader Ginsburg On Wine, Abortion, And (Your) Tattoos…

Rachel Maddow takes on the increasingly strange story of Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, who has reached a crisis point in the continuing scandal over the shady financial dealings of his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes, who is under investigation for alleged pay-to-play deals with companies doing business with the state. Virtually all the top elected officials in the state, Democrats like Kitzhaber, have called for him to resign. Tuesday saw a bizarre cross-country odyssey by Secretary of State Kate Brown, whom Kitzhaber called to come back from chairing a meeting in Washington DC, to meet with him. Very Urgent. And then he seemed surprised when she walked into his office. He told her he was definitely not resigning, and then said they should probably discuss the transition from his administration to her becoming governor if he does. Which he said he wouldn’t.
Read more on Morning Maddow: Oregon Governor Definitely Resigning Or Maybe Not, Who Knows?…

Rachel Maddow loves the Bush family almost as much as we do. Especially their talent for putting their foot in it, as President George H.W. Bush did when he seemed amazed by a supermarket scanner during his 1992 reelection campaign. Supposedly, he was amazed not by the scanner itself, but by its advanced features, like being able to read torn labels, but mostly, she says, it just looked like he was unfamiliar with the “fundamental basics of peasant life, like how you pay for stuff at the store.”
Read more on Morning Maddow: Jeb Bush’s Website Violates Everybody’s Privacy, Oops (Video)…

Tuesday night was just one big bucket of breaking media news, what with NBC news anchor Brian Williams getting suspended without pay for six months, effective immediately, and Jon Stewart announcing that he is leaving the Daily Show forever, effective eventually. Brian Williams has got to be feeling pretty darn lucky about the timing — Maddow leads with his suspension, of course, but what people will be talking about is Stewart’s departure. In fact, following her own show, Maddow went over to Lawrence O’Donnell’s studio and sat in on the panel discussing the changes — the Williams announcement got five or ten minutes, and the Stewart news took up the rest of the program.
Read more on Morning Maddow: Brian Williams Gets Six Months, Jon Stewart Gets Life (Video)…

Rachel Maddow brought us some updates Monday to her story last week about the serious outbreak of weird in Oregon. First, as she’d hoped, Rachel scored an interview with C.J. Phillips and Charlie Rainwater, a Portland couple who describe themselves as “high-tech bears,” and they tell her all about their plans for the website JebBushForPresident.com, which is not actually promoting the former Florida governor’s candidacy, but rather, invites gay and straight Americans to “have a chat, share viewpoints, maybe realize that the person you felt you could never have anything in common with is actually dealing with exactly the same issues.” They’re ridiculously sweet guys. And while the domain name isn’t for sale, they do have a backup, just in case: CJandCharlieForPresident.com.
Read more on Morning Maddow: Meet The Techie Bears Who’ve Been Trolling Jeb Bush With Equality…

Congratulations, Republicans! You’ve been running both houses of Congress for a month now, and so far, you’ve failed to pass your own bills on abortion and immigration, but at least you did pass a bill to demand building the Keystone XL pipeline — the same month as five other pipelines in the nation exploded or ruptured. And the House voted for the 56th time to repeal/restrict/delay Obamacare, so there’s that.
Read more on Morning Maddow: Republican Congress Fiddles While Syria Burns (Video)…

Oh, dear, it’s been a couple of weeks since we last did one of these features, and the comments queue may be spawning new forms of matter, like the sink full of unwashed dishes in Withnail and I. Let’s see what’s been stewing, shall we? Or who’s been stewing over what, more accurately.
Read more on Deleted Comments Of The Week: How Can You Libs Like Rachel Maddow When She’s Always Wrong?…

Thursday’s Rachel Maddow Show kicked off with a salute to Oregon, whose politics are strange and whose wildlife is uppity. There’s the seemingly never-ending parade of weird in the state’s minority Republican Party: The party chair asked people to send him pee samples, and their 2014 Senate candidate, who ran her entire campaign against Obamacare, applied for a job running the state’s Obamacare program after she lost the election.
Read more on Morning Maddow: Gay Oregon Bears Will Use Jeb Bush To Fight For Equality…

Rachel Maddow closed Wednesday’s show with an update to the story that got rightwing religious wacakloon Bryan Fischer fired (or at least demoted) from his job as spokesman for the American Family Association. You see, the AFA was paying for some 60 members of the Republican National Committee, including its chairman, Reince Priebus, to take a free trip to Israel, because fundagelicals just love Israel so much, what with it being an essential component of the End Times.
Read more on Morning Maddow: RNC and Hategroup AFA Might Not Heart Israel After All…

Rachel Maddow brings us Day Two of Republicans trying to figure out whether they believe in vaccinations against deadly diseases. In London, Chris Christie apparently took seriously her Monday piece about the curse of American politicians saying dumb things when they went to that city, because he refused to talk to reporters all day Tuesday, and not just about vaccinations. About anything.
Read more on Morning Maddow: The GOP Has Vax-In-Mouth Disease…

Rachel Maddow had far too much fun Monday recounting all the times American presidential candidates have made asses of themselves while visiting London. Actually, 80 percent of those times involved Mitt Romney’s single disastrous visit, but it sure set the template.
Read more on Morning Maddow: Chris Christie’s Half-Vaxed London Comments (Video)…

Rachel Maddow brings us an update on the Republican National Committee’s plans to take a free trip to Israel, paid for by the American Family Association, home of Bryan Fischer, one of the most prominent wackadoodles in rightwing media. This is sort of a perplexing choice by the RNC, given Fischer’s insistence that the U.S. Constitution applies only to Christians, and immigrants to this country should be forced to convert. The AFA “solved” that problem by firing Fischer from one of his jobs Wednesday, canning him as its “director of issues analysis” and national spokesman, but keeping him on as the host of its main radio program (and more on that in a later post).
Read more on Morning Maddow: Egad, The RNC Still Has A Religious Bigotry Problem? (Video)…

When we heard the news last night that Bryan Fischer was fired by the American Patriarchy Association, our first thought was that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer wingnut. Our second thought was that this could be really bad for Yr. Wonkette, as a casual search through the archives shows that Mr. Fischer is a near-endless source of stupid hilarity. And our third thought had something to do with beer, as per usual.
Read more on Bryan Fischer Was Not Fired From Wingnut Central For Saying Any Of The Following…

Rachel Maddow had a gen-you-wine old fashioned Big News Scoop in her Wednesday show. The larger story’s a little convoluted, but the really terrific news is right up there in the headline, kids: wingnut preacher Bryan Fischer has been fired from his position as “director of issues analysis” for the American Patriarchy Family Association. Mediaite reports, however, that he will continue to host his radio show for the AFA, so it’s really more of a demotion, we guess.
Read more on Morning Maddow: American Family Association Fires Most Embarrassing Hater Bryan Fischer…

Rachel Maddow goes all Mythbusters in this segment on the under-inflated foot-the-ball scandal, testing out the hypothesis that a New England Patriots employee may have done something nasty to the footballs in a stadium restroom.
Read more on Morning Maddow: Rachel Tests Balls In A Men’s Room, For SCIENCE! (Video)…

Monday’s Rachel Maddow Show was of course all Snowmageddonghazigate, and they started the hour with Rachel freezing outside at Rockefeller Center. Happily, unlike Chris Hayes, who had to do his whole show outside, Rachel has enough star power to get herself back inside after the first commercial break, and so here she is telling us that she can’t feel her hands, and then getting down to the serious business of talking about how the only time one of America’s three biggest cities had a female mayor (Jane Byrne in Chicago) came to office largely because her predecessor just plain couldn’t handle the giant snowstorm of 1978. And so there is much talk of snow and politics, as well as file footage of then-Governor Michael Dukakis in a perfectly darling sweater. “He’s a Von Trapp!”
Read more on Morning Maddow: Snowmageddonghazigate Hits New York, Impeach … Someone…

Rachel Maddow Show led off Friday’s show with an unforgettable look at Cindy Jacobs, the self-proclaimed Texas prophet who God regularly warns about any number of tragedies — mass shootings, political coups, and so on — which she then prevents or at least reduces the severity of through the power of prayer. Wonkette readers may recall that Ms. Jacobs successfully headed off an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan (it was just a different one from Hinkley’s), because her son had a tummyache. She was only the most flamboyant of several wingnutty faith healers and snake handlers (OK, not literally) headlining Bobby Jindal’s Great Big Prayer rally in Louisiana this weekend; the event was a pretty direct retread of a similar rally held by Rick Perry four years ago, and the early versions of its publicity materials even referred to “recent” events like Hurricane Katrina.
Read more on Morning Maddow: Meet The Prophet Lady From Bobby Jindal’s Prayer-A-Palooza…

Rachel Maddow leads into this developing story about the firing of the head of the Navy’s base at Guantanamo Bay with a quick overview of the David Petraeus affair, noting that Petraeus lost his job as CIA director only after an investigation into what seemed an unrelated matter, and also noting that we still don’t know whether Petraeus “will be criminally charged with disclosing classified information to the woman he was shtupping while he was head of the CIA.” We think that usage might be a first for cable news, but some smartass with Nexis/Lexis will probably correct us.
Read more on Morning Maddow: Here’s Rachel Saying ‘Shtupping.’ Also, Maybe A Murder At Gitmo?…

For Wednesday’s Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel was still using the great big desk from Tuesday’s State of the Union coverage, and she was pretty darn happy about having an extra day with it. It’s like an extra day of politic-nerd Super Bowl.
Read more on Morning Maddow: Is Obama Allowed To Be Feeling This Sassy? Pretty Much….

Following the State of the Union address Tuesday, hunky but vapid Illinois Congressmeat Aaron Schock offered this wisdom on the Twitter Machine:
It’s so true! Raising the minimum wage won’t eliminate poverty, so it’s clearly not worth doing. Rachel Maddow asked Schock to explain himself, and he went straight to the GOP myth that the minimum wage is a “starting wage,” and only teenagers and people just starting a first job make minimum wage. Isn’t it nice to know that the GOP is the party of economic realists? Maddow noted that it’s a pretty obvious fact that living on $10.10 an hour is a lot easier than $7.25 an hour, to which Schock had the perfect smart reply:
Read more on On Minimum Wage, GOP Offers Only Toxic (Aaron) Schock Treatment…

On a day when many rightwingers now claim that Martin Luther King really agreed with them, Rachel Maddow takes us back to 1983, when the right was at least honest about their feelings toward King: They considered him a communist who wasn’t worth a national holiday. Ronald Reagan only reluctantly came to accept a King holiday as inevitable, and after deciding to sign a bill declaring a federal holiday, had to call Coretta Scott King to apologize for writing a letter to a John Birch Society leader saying he shared the Bircher’s reservations about a King holiday, and that popular sentiment for King was “based on an image, not reality.” Reagan made that call shortly before visiting Augusta National Golf Course, which at the time allowed only white members, a policy it didn’t reverse until 1990. Imagine that. Mrs. King accepted the apology, and then later that weekend Reagan oversaw the invasion of Grenada in his pajamas:
Read more on Morning Maddow: Remember When Reagan Went To A Whites-Only Golf Course And Fought MLK Day?…

Rachel Maddow was in full political-nerd bliss Friday with this report on the announced schedule for the 2016 GOP primary debates. Rachel is pretty sure the best TV series of 2012 was the “nationally-televised tragicomedy of the Republican presidential primary debates,” and she’s looking forward to the 2016 edition, even if the party has taken a number of steps to tamp down on the crazy, like dictating that any candidate participating in a non-official debate will be barred from appearing in the remaining official ones. And here’s a surprise: Three of the nine planned debates will be on Fox. But let’s not get discouraged: Even with these attempts to rein in the process, there’s almost certainly going to be plenty of crazy to go around.
Read more on Morning Maddow: For 2016, GOP Debates To Try Ackin’ Less Cray-Cray (Video)…